1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic data streaming management. Further, the present invention relates to automated real time or near real time extraction of closed captions systems and methods relating thereto, and more particularly to advertisement video closed captioning. Near real-time extraction is extraction that is initiated during the broadcast whereas real-time extraction has no time delay.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many TV broadcasts and owners of video content enable users to see complete segments of a TV program or partial segments of a TV program. While this is usually sufficient for an individual with access to a high speed device, the individual can only ‘see’ and ‘listen’ to one channel at a time and sometimes to several. There is no ability for an individual or organization to monitor in real time dozens or hundreds of TV channels for particular keywords, concepts or phrases (words of interest (WOI)) and be alerted of the occurrence of those words, browse for WOI, search to any WOI and persist the WOI over a long period of time. Further, there is a need to be able to deliver the WOI over a lower speed network, such as a telephone provider's network, in increasing bandwidth without clogging the network infrastructure.
There also remains a need for automated systems and methods for encoding and embedding tag(s) associated with data streams for providing search capability of the data streams.
Relevant prior art U.S. patents and published pending U.S. patent applications include the following:
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,859,662, 5,481,296, 6,266,094 and U.S. Pub. Nos. 2008/0313146 and 2003/0221198 relate to extracting captions from video broadcasts.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,859,662 and U.S. Pub. No. 2009/0049481 relate to extracting captions in real time.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,518,657 relates to storing captions on a device or pushing to a cloud.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,859,662 and 6,266,094 relate to providing alerts based upon key words.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,481,296 relates to providing alerts based upon concepts of interest.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,580,437 and 6,798,912 relate to creating an index of video segments based upon caption information.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,859,662, 7,467,398, 5,561,457 and U.S. Pub. Nos. 2007/0027844, 2008/0313146, 2009/0049481 and 2003/0093814 relate to viewing indexed video or audio based on caption searches.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,859,662, 5,481,296 relate to software for an end user for the related technology; and U.S. Pub. No. 2003/0192050 relates to software for broadcast location.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,457,010 relates to storing information about a user's profile.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,210,157 and U.S. Pub. Nos. 2007/0300250 and 2003/0221198 relate to allowing for finding media based on a user's profile.
In addition to the patent references listed hereinabove, it is known in the art to provide for free and licensed applications that allow individuals to record and extract CC of completed recordings. These applications are typically located at the end-user's premise, provide for a limited number of channel recordings and provide limited database and search capabilities. Most of these applications are aimed at providing traditional Personal Video Recording (PVR) functionality such as record this program at this time on this channel. Some allow for added features such as limited keyword searches of extracted captions and only of recordings in the format of the vendor of the TV tuner. All of them enable extraction after the broadcasts have been recorded and not while the broadcasts are in progress.
Open-Source close caption (CC) extraction applications include:
a) The SCC Tools package consists of ten command-line tools (and one General Parser module) designed to assist in the task of extracting, manipulating, and inserting the additional data included in Line 21 of NTSC video: closed captions, MSNTV links, V-Chip ratings, and a variety of lesser-used types of information. http://www.geocities.com/mcpoodle43/SCC_TOOLS/DOCS/SCC_TOOLS.HTML#CCExtract
b) MPG2SRT—MPG2SRT is a standalone program to extract closed captioning data embedded within an MPEG2 file. The extracted captions can be saved in a .srt format for use with directvobsub or similar application, or as a .SAMI file for use with Windows Media Player. http://www.htpctools.com/mpg2srt/
c) http://ccextractor.sourceforge.net/ccextractor_for_windows.html
There are companies that provide (fee or free) PVR or DVR functionality software. All provide the basic and/or enhanced PVR or DVR capabilities and some provide extended capabilities. Some features include: pause, rewind, fast-forward live; record all favorite TV shows by name; and integrated TV guide (provided by the DVR software). Some companies providing commercially available products or services at the time of the present invention include:
a) Microsoft MediaCenter—allows for recording of selected channels at particular times and all of the traditional PVR functionality.
b) SnapStream Personal and Enterprise edition products are the most advanced. The products are able to capture, index and extract captions and alert users based on keywords. The application is aimed at an individual (personal device) or an organization and is bundled with its own hardware and software. A full description of the capability of the device is: http://www.snapstream.com/enterprise/features.asp.
c) ATI Multi-Media Center (http://ati.amd.com/products/multimediacenter/features.html) allows the user to record and search the Closed Caption text during TV-on-Demand™ sessions and is limited to the number of tuners in the user's system. Creation and delivery of alerts are limited.
d) SageTV (http://sagetv.com/stvfeatures.html?sageSub=tv) offers many features of an advanced PVR and DVR.
e) MythTV (www.mythtv.org) is a Free Open Source software digital video recorder (DVR) project distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL. It has been under heavy development since 2002, and now contains most features one would expect from a good DVR.